


The One Untold

by returntosaturn



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2014-05-12
Packaged: 2018-01-24 11:17:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1603196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/returntosaturn/pseuds/returntosaturn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. (Curse hasn't happened, Emma is born in the Enchanted Forest, but grows up in another kingdom away from Snow and Charming). Jones knew there was something different about her from the moment he met her. Promising his heart was easy. That he might risk his life to help her to find the destiny she had been missing, this wasn't part of his plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> AN: So this idea sprang out of tonight's season finale with so much Captain Swan goodness that I just happened to be inspired. I do have a plan for this that isn't entirely set in stone yet, but I do have a general course I want it to go. For now, the first chapter is a 500-word snippet. I'm not sure if other chapters will each be 500 words, but that would certain be a good challenge wouldn't it? Leave your suggestions in the comment box. Also, I'm thinking about flip-flopping between FTL and Storybrooke, but I'm not sure. From what you gather here with this little bit, let me know your thoughts. I'm up for suggestions!
> 
> So the basic idea is that Emma is born in the Enchanted Forest, but is taken to another kingdom to escape the Evil Queen, raised as Princess Emma to another King and Queen (possibly under some sort of protection spell? because it would be oh-so easy for Regina to find her). She knows she doesn't belong, and has never fit in. Her parents begin to pressure her into marriage when she meets Killian....and well, we'll just have to see where the journey takes us, hmmm? Enjoy.

The first time he sees her, she’s wearing blue. Its an exquisite color on her, and brings out the gold in her eyes. He bows politely, low and long. She smiles demurely and answers that it was lovely to meet him, just as a proper princess should. 

The queen, a dark haired woman on her right, suggests a dance. Its impossible to miss the blonde girl’s unwilling expression, a crooked smile and wide eyes thrown toward her mother. 

But she’s ushered forward anyways, and clasps her hand in Killian’s like a proper lady does.

His hand finds her waist and draws her near, and she no longer protests, physically at least.

He really isn’t aware of where to begin with speaking to her, and luckily she takes the reigns. 

“Sorry about…her…” she says, glancing toward where her parents, King John and Queen Charlotte, are seated at the head of the room, watching the dancing partners twirl before them. “She can be pushy.”

“Do you object with dancing with me, Princess?” he asks, lifting his hand to let her pirouette beneath his arm. He doesn’t miss the grimace that flashes over her features at his use of her title.

“Not really. I mean…maybe because I don’t know you. At all. It’s a little awkward dancing with countless men you don’t even know. Kind of weighs on a girl’s nonconformity after a while. But so does all of this pomp and circumstance.” 

He quirks a smile at her lax speech. Quite bad form for a lady of her designation.

“Nonconformity? And do you consider yourself a nonconformist, Princess?” He doesn’t know where the words come from. But he does amend them, by the look in her golden brown eyes that are not her mother’s. “Princess…Emma.”

She seems to concede to the use of her given name, and speaks again. “I hope.”

He has to laugh. “Whatever for?”

“Look around,” she says when she comes back to face him after they both make to open their arms and step away from each other and back again. “If your parents thought it necessary for you to dance with every eligible bachelor at their anniversary ball, wouldn’t you get a little fed up?”

He doesn’t know how to respond. “I’m a seaman. I wouldn’t really…”

She gives him that disapproving crooked smile she had given to her mother. “Yes, and a man. You wouldn’t get it.”

“Perhaps they only want to give you your best chance,” he says, watching the swell of her cheeks when she smiles. She is quite pretty, he notices.

She seems to be betrayed by his words and steps away as the dance allows. “Thank you for the dance, Lieutenant Jones. Good form.” It almost sounds like the bitter pith of an apple when she speaks. Deep and tough.

He reaches for her hand when she steps out of his arms, catching just her fingers before she flits away from the dance floor, a flurry of skirts and loose blonde hair.


	2. Chapter 2

The second times he spots her, she’s crying. He’s abandoned his brother at the Princess’s seventeenth birthday ball, dancing with a very lovely duchess. But Killian and Liam both knew she wouldn’t last long. Liam never had patience for women, and loved the sea life and his position far much to try and maintain a relationship with a woman past one night. They all had flaws that lead to bad form. 

She was seated on a stone bench in one of the castle corridors, her knees and her pile of skirts pulled up over the other half of the bench. She looks like a giant primrose pink cloud sitting there, only her blonde hair, loose again, hiding her face.

He pushes her skirts aside, chuckling under his breath at the ridiculousness of her attire, and sits.

She’s already looking at him. “Go away.”

“Make me,” he challenges.

She recognizes him, even though its been months. She wipes under her eyes with her index fingers and glares at him through the smudges of black paint on her cheeks. He leans forward to wipe the blotches with his handkerchief, and she swats his hand away. But he isn’t deterred. When the cotton presses against her skin, he feels her flinch beneath it.

“Not a very happy way to spend your birthday, hmm?”

She scoffs. He half expects her to tell him to leave again, but she doesn’t. 

She doesn’t speak.

She just looks down at his hands that clutch the handkerchief now resting almost on her lap, in the folds of her puffy pink dress. She’s staring at the silver band on his pinky finger. He can see it reflected in her eyes.

“They want me to marry,” she says. “So they arranged this noble from another kingdom to ask for my hand.” She drags in a breath. “I can’t stand it here.”

He watches her. The tears that leak again from her clenched eyes aren’t a teenaged girl’s angst. They belong to woman who doesn’t belong and never has. Who has been abandoned time and time again by a mother who doesn’t understand her and a father who is connected only to the politics of his kingdom and not to the moments he has left with his daughter who is fast becoming a grown woman.

He wonders if she’s actually born to be a royal, and if that’s really what her best chance contains. Rumors of Princess Emma’s real birthright weren’t unknown in this kingdom, but as a navy man he pays little attention to the gossip of the towns he visits. 

They say she was born in a far away kingdom, sent here for protection. Many speculated about who her true parents were, and some even say she belonged to the princess with lips red as blood. But these were only wives’ tales.

He leans forward and presses the tips of his fingers to her cheek. She finally looks up at him with a damp face.

“Come with me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a cliffhanger, hmm? 500 words, again. I think I'm going to keep them that way for now. Its a good challenge. Comment if you enjoyed.


End file.
